Adaptation enthusiasts praise the best movies to have deviated from the source material

Hollywood has been all-in on adaptations for a long time, but fans are still shocked and appalled when serious deviations are made to beloved source material, even though it’s been part and parcel of translating any existing property to the big screen since the dawn of time.

Whether it’s a novel, comic book, video game, TV show, or any other form of media that’s been cannibalized by the studio system, there’s always going to be a vocal subset of purists who are happy to shout from the rooftops that they’re furious about things either being added or removed from something that they love.

However, on the other side of the coin, it’s difficult to argue against the sentiment that many feature films have taken huge creative liberties, and yielded much better results. That’s the crux of the discussion that’s been happening over on Reddit, with the conversation getting kick-started by mentioning one of the best-ever examples; Steven Spielberg’s classic Jurassic Park.

Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho remains the progenitor of the slasher flick and an all-time great, but would that have happened had it kept the novel’s focus on Marion Crane? Almost certainly not. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Spielberg again with Jaws, and Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride are among the top-voted replies at the time of writing, so there seems to be a trend emerging.

We’ve seen countless slavish adaptations go down in a ball of either critical or commercial flames, but the aforementioned classics show that tearing up the rulebook and putting a fresh stamp on the inspiration can bring phenomenal results.